Nathan Gupta can name every teacher he’s ever had. “I’ve been fortunate to have had a lot of really great ones,” he says, and he credits them with inspiring his interest in biotechnology and education, both fields that Nathan hopes to work more with in the coming years of his undergraduate and/or graduate career. An avid history buff, Nathan relates his current challenges to those of historical greats such as Henry Ford and Abraham Lincoln. Like Ford, Nathan hopes to use his entrepreneurial and technical skills to make a difference for the people around him. “If you’d asked the people what they wanted, they would’ve said, ‘a faster horse,’” Nathan says, paraphrasing Ford. “People don’t know what they want until you invent it.” That’s exactly how Nathan hopes to change the world, through multidisciplinary innovation that combines technology, business and policy. “Right now [these fields] are very siloed…voices aren’t being heard,” says Nathan. But he knows it doesn’t always have to be like that. His work at an aerospace and defense company over the summer of 2016 brought STEM and business together, proving that these seemingly different fields can work together in innovative and world-changing ways.

When asked what he likes about his chosen fields, Nathan lights up. “Technology allows you to create something all on your own, and creating and problem solving are intricately connected. Data, if you will, is like a language. There’s so much data in the type of world we’re moving in.” Nathan believes that the ability to filter through the excess data floating around in the void will help him create new technologies that will ultimately optimize business strategy for companies around the world. So far, Nathan has done consulting and project managing work with BOND Consulting, technological projects with the Multidisciplinary Design Program, and will be acting as the business manager of the Michigan Daily beginning in the fall of 2017. The work has taught him a lot about strategy and teamwork.

He doesn’t know quite where he’ll end up, if it’s up to him, it doesn’t matter as long as he is helping people. When asked what he’d hope for ten years down the road, Nathan quips, “hopefully done with student loans.” He’s certainly making the best of his (albeit expensive) education; Nathan made a vow to meet one new person every day during college, and he says he’s got about a 99% success rate. Dorm life, the daily commute to the engineering campus, and EECS lectures with hundreds of people have helped him with that, but he says moving forward that he’d like to work on deepening and maintaining the relationships he forms.